Nicknamed “the projects”, government subsidized housing operates under the goal of providing assistance to low-income households and individuals. Through its portrayal of housing projects as hubs of crime and violence, the media effectively paints a largely negative of poverty in the United States. Media portrayals also disproportionately represent the American poor as being almost entirely composed of people of color, especially African Americans and Latinos. The legacy of the representation of public housing and the American poor has thus resulted in a hegemonic image of the poor, in which they are dehumanized and blamed for their own socioeconomic status and living conditions. In “This is Home”, a spoken word piece performed by Deandre Evans, Will Hartfield, and Donte Clark, three poets from Richmond, CA, who worked in conjunction with reporter Amy Julia Harris, illuminates the various realities faced by residents of the city’s Hacienda housing projects, whom have had to endure horrible living conditions, resulting …show more content…
“This is Home” effectively debunks the dominant myth that the poor in the United States are lazy and actively choose to live in poverty, as the lived experiences relayed through the piece demonstrate the reality of the dehumanization of the poor, which has served to justify the neglect of the poor by a broken housing system that ultimately, was never designed to alleviate the struggles of poverty. Created within the context of the dominant, capitalist narrative, the myth that the poor willingly choose to live in poverty and take advantage of the US system is bolstered by the dehumanization of the poor. The piece opens with the line “this is where roaches and rodents are like family” (Clark et al.), introducing the reality of dilapidation found in the Hacienda projects. While “rodents and rodents” attests to the literal presence of pests and infestation, the